National Tragedy
Premier Sillari, National Heroes Murdered By Bomb On Aircraft, Hundreds Killed In Leningrad
Fascist Group Claims Responsibility, Lysenko Promises "Terrible Vengence"
Leningrad firefighters struggle to contain the blaze.
September 21, 1973
Leningrad, USSR
Soviet Premier Kaaral Sillari, along with dozens of other top government officials, generals, leading intellectuals, worker's leaders, and national heroes, have been killed when their plane exploded over Leningrad. Hundreds of civilians were killed on the ground by falling debris and fire which spread across several Leningrad neighborhoods. The explosion was caused by a bomb planted on board the plane by a member of a fascist terrorist organization.
Premier Sillari will be remembered as a visionary and a genius, who were always faithful to the people and championed their rights and aspirations, and the man who led the Soviet Union through its first years as a reconstructed nation and directed an unprecendented period of economic expansion and scientific triumphs.
Tragic Loss
The plane was flying to Helsinki, where the Premier attended a celebration for the anniversary of the establishment of the Soviet Republic of Finland, to Pyongyang, in the Korean Soviet Republic, where this year's All-Union Workers' Fair is being held. All 131 on board the plane were killed, including many prominent public figures and intellectuals. Among the martyrs are:
- Soviet Minister for Finance, Sun Namchol, Minister for Agriculture Ivan Symonenko, Minister for Communication Radik Altynsarin, Minister for Trade Armen Saroyan, and Minister for Justice, Konstantin Baryshnikov.
- President of the Soviet Republic of Finland, Hertta Kuusinen, and her family.
- Sergei Pavlovich Korolev, the irreplacably talented "Chief Designer" of the All-Union Integrated Space Agency, along with Valentin Glushko, the AISA's foremost engine designer, and Mstislav Keldysh, the gifted "Chief Theoretician" of the space program. Also killed were cosmonauts Yuri Gagarin and Gherman Titov.
- The Estonian poet Milvi Suurhans and the Russian novelist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, winners of last year's premier Soviet's literary prize.
- 12 people's representatives on the Supreme Soviet, 2 generals of the Red Army, leaders of the Komsomol and the winners of the Komsomol Young Workers Award.
- 15 employees of TASS, including the anchorwoman of Programme 1 Nightly News, Irina Vedeneyeva.
The deaths of these talented, gifted, fine men and women, the pride of the Soviet Union, is a tragic loss not only to the Soviet people but to all the world.
Pandemonium in Leningrad
The plane crashed on to a densely-populated residential area of Leningrad. It was fully fueled as it was a transcontinental flight, and the fuel was ignited, causing a fire that spread over the city and took half a day to extinguish.
Photos from the area revealed the full extent of the horror: mangled bodies trapped underneath jagged pieces of debris, terrible burns on children caught in the firestorm, and bodies burnt to the point of being unrecognizable. Thousands of people will be left homeless after today, and the cost of rebuilding is expected to exceed a billion roubles. A State of Emergency has been declared throughout the Soviet Union, and Leningrad is designated a federal disaster zone.
Swift Justice
A fascist organization, the Holy Russian Nationalist Revolutionary Army, has claimed responsibility for the attack. One of their members has planted a timed explosive device on the plane, which caused the explosion. A spokesman for the terrorists issued a statement via Spanish media: "This morning is the most glorious morning in the history of the Holy Russian Nation. Today, the war to save the soul of Holy Mother Russia from the godless corrupted abomination that is Soviet state begins. We call upon all patriotic Russians to overthrow the diseased entity known as the Soviet Union, expel the foreigners defiling the sacred Russian motherland, and follow Our Leader's vision, to build a new Russia, a holy Russia, a strong, independent Russia".
The HRNRA aims to overthrow the people's Soviet Union and institute an extremist-nationalist imperialist state based on fascist and capitalist ideology. KGB intelligence indicated that this terrorist organization is supported and funded by the Hegemony.
Raids against HRNRA's local cell hideouts in Novgorod and Novosibirsk yielded documents detailing the planning of this barbaric terrorist act, and plans for many other terrorist acts, including a plot to sabotage a Vostok manned spaceflight, and another plot to fly an Aeroflot airliner into the Palace of the Soviets building in Moscow. The group has also been linked to arson, theft, riots against ethnic minorities, and espionage.
The Vice-Premier of the USSR, Vitali Vasylyovych Lysenko, has vowed to avenge the victims of this atrocity and "root out the fascist enemies of the people wherever they are, and bring them to justice. He also sent out a warning, apparently directed at the HRNRA's foreign benefactors: "to all those who dares assist them and undermine the glorious people's Union: you will be crushed, you will feel the worker's wrath, and in the end the brave Soviet people will be victorious and emerge from this stronger and more united than ever." In his first acts as Acting Premier, Comrade Lysenko issued a decree temporarily suspending civil liberties in the interests of public order and security, and ordered a crackdown on insidious counter-revolutionary organizations like the HRNRA.